Two years ago I moved to my current residence, I came to this city after living in El Paso, Texas. In El Paso I was subject to Time Warner's service, while it was not stellar by ANY means, I paid $45 a month for Cable Internet that was advertised at 25mbs Down/ 10mbs Up but averaged around 8mbs Down/2 Mbs Up.
After having to deal with the typical American Service Provider BS where they throttle you back to a crawl until you call in and complain enough to have a tech come out and "magically fix your speed" for the next few weeks, I was pretty jaded about ISPs.
Then I got to where I live now, and the internet monopoly here is run by Frontier Communications. The only package they offered was DSL Internet, which costs roughly $45 a month for 5mbs Down / 2mbs Up, but realistically it averages around 1mbs Down / 6-800kbs Up. But that's not all you pay for this "quality" service, you also of course have to get a phone line because it is DSL, which costs you another $30+ per month, so in the end just to have a horrible crap service I end up paying nearly $100 for crap.
But that's just where it gets started:
When I first moved here and was having these speed issues I got frustrated with the speeds and complained to their Tech Support, and what did they say? "We actually just started a new turbo service in your area which will increase your speeds to 10mbs!" After the incredibly slow speeds I was suffering (I use my computer for work, my kids stream their shows to the xbox, and sometimes I play games online during my off time, all of which were impossible to do with these speeds and performance) So of COURSE I took the Turbo speed, it was only $14 more a month after all!
Did that fix my speeds? Heck yes! It seemed much faster (than what it was) and admittedly I was able to stream my kids shows AND do what I wanted on my computer now, sometimes it was still slow but atleast it seemed to work. Until one day I was having a heated game on some First Person Shooter game I don't recall anymore, but my friends on TeamSpeak (voice communication program) told me to check my speeds on speedtest.net (I have used this before but never bothered after getting turbo)
Come to find out my speeds were coming back around 2mbs Down / 800kbs Up. There are no words for the rage I was in. After cycling my router/modem multiple times and the speeds never improving, I called Tech Support.....
The CS Rep's answer was "Oh I'm sorry, we actually don't offer those speeds in your area, the fastest speeds we can guarantee are 2mbs Down and 1mbs up."
So basically at that point I had been paying over $100 a month for 2mbs Down / 1mbs Up (When I got even that).
Over the years if you can believe it, the service and quality has gone DOWN. My speeds have gotten worse and worse. I have had technicians out to the house MANY times, they plug their tool into the wall, make some calls to "the office" and then show me a speedtest of my advertised Up and Down, then it works great for a bit, and then crashes out into a flop again.
It disgusts me that after over TWO YEARS these people have done NOTHING to upgrade their network, only add more poor suckers to it and deliver ever decreasing performance.
To give you a comparison, my cell phone speedtest.net scores were 30mbs Down / 10mbs Up.
I will be canceling both my Business account at my storefront and my Residential account (and getting rid of that worthless landline) and getting a hotspot plan for my cell phone. Even my cell having to deal with towers gets more reliable service than my DSL...
Oh yeah that reminds me, my Frontier Internet also stops working randomly every week throughout the days. For no reason at all, my internet will go out, all my devices will disconnect, and then reconnect as normal. I've complained about this for two years, I've gotten responses from "We are doing work on our network" to "Make sure you log in to your Frontier Yahoo email every now and then, sometimes that makes your router work better".
If there is ANY other provider in your area, DEEPLY consider them before you take Frontier. The product offered is HORRIBLE. The problem however is the way America's Internet system is setup, most companies have a monopoly on an area and it comes down to "Take our crap service, or cut the cord and live in the stone age. Don't like our speeds? Ooooh, that's too bad, I'm sorry, geee, I'm so sorry, yeaaaaah."
